The Morning After
by GylzGirl
Summary: Rupert Giles coping after tragedy. [Giles/Jenny]


The Morning After  
by GylzGirl  
  
DISCLAIMERS: Giles and Jenny belong to Joss, WB, Kuzui, Mutant Enemy etc. I own the actual story and idea. This one is rated TV-MA or movie-R. It contains sexual situations. This may fit into cannon or it may fall into alt. reality depending on the events of next weeks "Passion" episode.  
Written: 1998 (The week before Passion aired)  
  
  
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Rupert Giles opened his eyes as the morning light entered his bedroom. He immediately let his gaze travel down to the sleeping form who's head rested on his bare chest. Her black, silken hair fanned wildly around her and he smiled in memory of how it had gotten that way. Her breath blew the hairs on his chest causing a pleasant little tickle. Giles reached his hand to her hair and stroked. He felt her eyelashes flutter against his skin. She looked up at him with her dark amber eyes and smiled. He smiled back, "Oh Jenny."  
  
Jenny lowered her lips to his chest and kissed. He exhaled and grasped her shoulders gently, drawing her up to him. Her breasts left trails of heat across his chest as skin grazed skin.   
  
Giles pulled that perfect red mouth of hers to his own and licked it teasingly until it opened for him. He explored her mouth with a hunger he had never remembered feeling before. It had always been that way with her, hungry and immediate. His feelings for her had always carried an urgency with them, as though they alone were aware how little time was left.  
  
Giles reached down and cupped her breast, allowing her warm skin to melt the memory of its weight into his hand. He stroked his thumb across the nipple and she gasped against his mouth.  
  
"Rupert," his name almost a plea, hauntingly so.  
  
He leaned up and recaptured her mouth, tasting, devouring. Giles felt her soft hand brush his naked hip and his breath caught. He threw his head back into the pillow and smiled. Soft kisses now, his throat, his collarbone, over his heart, just above his navel, and lower, her chin gently brushing against him. Then nothing, he could not even feel her warmth anymore. His eyes snapped open and she was gone. "Jenny!!"  
  
Rupert Giles awoke before the dawn, shouting her name, "Jenny!!" He looked around the shadowed room for her, his breath still panting with fright. She was not here, she would not, could not be. Like the gypsy that she was, she had waltzed into his life, expertly stolen his heart and then vanished from this world with it.  
  
"Damn," he cursed, as the terrible reality of it all hit home with a shattering finality. All the hurt, all the blame, all the passion they had shared, poof, over, gone in a single moment. Turned to dust, just like everything eventually did in this accursed little town.  
  
They had been like Earth and Moon, strong forces beyond their control pulling them together, ripping them apart, bringing them back to each other, tidal.  
  
Giles stood, trampled into his bathroom and numbly pulled on the water in the shower. As the steam began to fill the room, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, A days worth of stubble, eyes lined red on the inside and darkly shadowed underneath from the hour of sleep he nearly got, "My God, I look ancient."  
  
Giles stumbled to the shower, stepped in and slid the frosted glass door closed. He stepped fully under the almost intolerably hot water. He closed his eyes and tilted his head up into the stream.  
  
Her nimble fingers crept across his stomach from behind him. Giles reached down and captured her wrists, pulling her body tightly to his back. As he relished the feel of her curves against his tingling back, he brought her hands up to his face and kissed her palms, alternating as he did. He felt her abdomen flutter against his back as she giggled, planting a soft kiss on his shoulderblade. She slipped free of his grasp and lay her palms flat on his chest, then slid them down that surface maddeningly slow. Giles pinched his lip between his teeth.  
  
When she reached his waist, she wrapped her arms around him tightly, squeezing him to her. He brought his hands down to rest on hers and opened his eyes. Giles saw only his own hands held flat against his stomach.  
  
Warm, stinging tears filled his eyes, flowing over and mingling with the water. Did she blame him? Was that it? Was she haunting him? Or, was he haunting himself because deep, deep down he still blamed him?  
  
Giles finished up the shower in perfunctory manor, then climbed out and toweled off. He padded back into his room and lay his naked body down on the unmade bed.  
  
He absolutely did not want to go to the school today but it had taken all of Giles' persuasive powers to get the kids to leave him last night and if he didn't show they'd be picturing him lying face down on his bathroom's white tile floor in a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood. They were nothing if not creative, his kids.  
  
For a fleeting moment, he actually entertained the notion. How easy it would be. How little it would take. The slightest kiss of the blade to his wrists, touched like a feather. He'd feel pain, then warm, then cold, then nothing at all. The merest trace of a smile twitched on his lips then quickly faltered as he pictured something else. Buffy's corpse laying in the park, eyes staring blindly, throat ripped out, a rose in her hand. Her new Watcher unable to find her in time, her grief making her unable to fight, her guilt over Giles' own death making her unwilling to defend herself.  
  
Giles physically shook the image from his brain and sat up on the edge of the mattress. He rubbed his hands down his face and groaned loudly before forcing himself onto his feet. He wandered to closet to find the right costume for the performance he was about to give.  
  
"Don't worry about me Buffy. I'm fine. I'm always fine. I'm the Watcher, having the life of the woman I love snuffed out before me is no reason to be a total wreck. I'll just shrug it off, the British way."  
  
Somewhere Rupert Giles heard the universe laugh at his bleeding heart and the laugh sounded very much like Ethan. 


End file.
